Georgia and Russia Cut Diplomatic Ties

The Georgian government broke off diplomatic relations with Russia on Friday and Russia responded by doing the same.

ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW — The Georgian government broke off diplomatic relations with Russia on Friday and Russia responded by doing the same.

While the move was expected in the wake of the war this month, it was a significant political ripple in post-Soviet politics. Never before has Russia severed formal diplomatic ties with any of the other 14 republics that became independent states in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The countries will retain consular offices in each other’s territories, handling such matters as issuing passports and assisting their citizens with legal affairs, but the political ties will now be handled through intermediaries, a spokeswoman for Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said.

Georgia is now in talks with several countries as possible candidates to represent Georgia in Moscow, the ministry spokeswoman said, in the way, for example, that the Swiss Embassy in Tehran represents American interests in Iran, a country with which the United States has no diplomatic relations.

The Georgian Parliament passed a law on Thursday instructing the government to sever ties with Russia as one of seven points of protest to the Russian Army’s occupation of two separatist regions and a security zone around them, and Russian government recognition of the two regions as independent countries.

The law does not prohibit Russian and Georgian diplomats from meeting on the territory of third countries.

The other points abrogate all treaties allowing Russian troops to be present in Georgia as peacekeepers, with the exception of the European Union-brokered cease-fire accord that ended the war, and instruct the attorney general of Georgia to investigate allegations that Russian troops drove ethnic Georgians from villages in a campaign of “ethnic cleansing.”

The law, called “On the Occupation of Georgian Territories by Russia,” also characterizes the militias of the separatist regions as illegal armed formations.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by saying that the severing of diplomatic relations would harm efforts to reach negotiated settlements. “Without such a channel for contacts, we will have difficulties trying to bring our points of view to each other’s attention,” the ministry spokesman, Andrei Nesterenko, said, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

The diplomatic breach between Georgia and Russia was the first for Russia with a former Soviet state since 1991, according to Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, the director of the Polity Foundation, a Moscow research group.

In another diplomatic development, Abkhazia, which Russia recognized Tuesday, asked Russia on Friday to represent its interests abroad, Interfax reported. The region’s president, Sergei Bagapsh, said this provision would be included in a so-called friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance treaty that the enclave is preparing to sign with Russia. Russia is offering a similar agreement to South Ossetia.

Also on Friday, Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, pressed for support for Russia’s military actions in Georgia from Central Asian leaders, whose countries’ ties with the West are now seen as more tenuous as their future energy exports are unlikely to travel in a westward direction, through Georgia. That leaves Russia, China and Iran as potential export routes.

Mr. Medvedev promised the Tajik president, Emomali Rahmon, Russian investment in hydroelectric plants and natural gas fields. He added that Tajikistan’s “reputation and role are significant and invariably belong to the sphere of Russia’s strategic interests,” Interfax reported.

The former Soviet president, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, issued a plea for calm calm as tensions rose between Russia and the West. “Stop, stop and again stop,” Mr. Gorbachev said Friday. “It is important to save everything that has been done in recent years.”

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